At the skippers meeting it was decided that each skipper take a turn at writing up a Saturday. For some reason I am up first so here goes.
It wasn’t 18 knots, well actually it was at some point. Definitely windy enough for jibs until it eased up. We got the wind speedo out and it said get your genoa up, so that that is what we did for the final race and it was fine.
Race 1 was cool, got an ok start. Hit the first wind shift ok and sailed the boat flat and high to get a nice lead by the top mark with Sadiiqi and Mayhem chasing. It was 3 laps which was a bit strange and we held our lead through out by covering the fleet, The only cockup was a spinnaker take down where the halyard knotted and we had to sail upwind with it held down by the crew until Lorrie sorted it out.
Race 2 and not such a good start I thought Mayhem were over as they were above me so I bore off and they weren’t, durrrr. Sadiiqi were sailing well and were battling it out with Mayhem all around the course. We were in third and battling with IOD’s all around the course trying to get back in touch with Pete and Jon but it never happened so that is how it stayed.
Race 3, another 3 lapper and things got more interesting. At the pin end start Gripper tried to Port tack the fleet only to have to crash tack because of us on Starboard, he pulled his crew up out of the water and carried on sailing ahead and underneath us. The genoa didn’t seem to be helping too much but it wasn’t hurting us either. After a few tacks Sadiiqi and Mayhem came in from the right to take the lead and we followed. A good downwind has us round the mark inside Sadiiqi and sail the beat nicely inside then. When they tacked so did we with a nice lee bow only to watch Geoff our new crew go flying uner the guard rail and go swimming. At this point I thought of deploying our new life sling and getting him. Bugger that, a quick gybe and tack then a sail by with the genoa flapping and we hauled him back on in less that a minute. Now where were those other boats? Mayhem and Sadiiqi were off again and we dogged it out with everyone else. At the last top mark we tacked inside underneath Solaise only to have the genoa sheet wrap itself around the mast eye for the topping lift and we got killed. Siren and Solaise sailed around us and off on the final downwind. Siren gybed early and we stayed left with Solaise. We both caught a nice wind line and overtook Siren, who came back on starboard, we gybed just infront and tried to call Solaise on starboard as we headed for the pin end. They gybed at the last second and we had to give them room to get around the mark so bore off and they got us by inches. Bugger.
Oh well, a good day out and it showed we have lots of work to do on boat handling. It must be the start of the season!!
See you all out there next week.
Mike Lewis